Feeling the floor with my feet, I stood an instant in the dark stuffy room, and listened. It smelled strongly of herbs, on which account I hate that smell to this day. I could hear Mrs. Harris snoring next door; and the pendulum of the fine new clock on the stairs, which was Mrs. D — — ‘s latest pride, was swinging to and fro regularly; and I knew that at the slightest alarm the house would be awake. But I had gone too far to recede; and though I feared and sweated, and at the touch of a hand must have screamed aloud, I went forward and groping my way across the floor, found the bureau, and tried the drawer.
It was locked, but crazily; and Jennie foreseeing the obstacle had given me a chisel. Inserting the point, I listened awhile to assure myself that all was quiet, and then with the resolution of despair forced the drawer open with a single wrench. Probably the noise was no great one, but to my ears it rang through the night loud as the crack of laden ice. I heard the sleeper in the next room cease her snoring and turn in the bed; and cowering down on the floor I gave up all for lost. But in a moment she began to breathe again, and encouraged by that and the silence in the house, I drew the drawer open, and feeling for the bag, discovered it, and clutching it firmly, turned to the window.
I found that Jennie had mounted the ladder, and was looking into the room, her hands on the sill, her head dark against the sky. “Have you got it?” she whispered, thrusting in her arm and groping for me. “Then give it me while you get the candlesticks. They are wrapped in flannel, and are under the bed.”
I gave her the bag, which chinked as it passed from hand to hand; then I turned obediently, and groping my way to the bed which stood beside the bureau, I felt under it. I found nothing, but did not at once give up. The candlesticks might lie on the farther side, and accordingly I rose and climbed over the bed and tried again, passing my hands through the flue and dust which had gathered under Mrs. D — — ‘s best feather-bed.
How long I might have searched in the dark, and vainly, I cannot say; for my efforts were brought to a premature end by a dull thud that came to my ears apparently from the next room. Certain that it could be caused by nothing less than Mrs. Harris getting out of bed, I crawled out, and got to my feet in a panic, and stood in the dark quaking and listening; so terrified that I am sure if the good woman had entered at that moment, I should have fallen on my knees before her, and confessed all. Nothing followed, however; the house remained quiet; I heard no second sound. But my nerve was gone. I wanted nothing so much now as to be out of the place; not for a thousand guineas would I have stayed; and without giving another thought to the candlesticks, I groped my way to the window, and passing one leg over the sill, felt hurriedly for the ladder.
I failed to find it, and tried again; then peering down called Jennie by name. She did not answer. A second time I called, and felt about with my foot; still without success. Then as it dawned upon me at last that the ladder was really gone, and I a prisoner, I thought of prudence no longer, but I called frantically, at first in a whisper, and then as loudly as I dared; called and called again, “Jennie! Jennie!” And yet again, “Jennie!”
Still no answer came; but listening intently, in one of the intervals of silence, I caught the even beat of hoofs, receding along the road, and growing each moment less marked. They held me; scarcely breathing, I listened to them, until they died away in the distance of the summer night, and only the sharp insistent chirp of the cricket, singing in the garden below, came to my ears.
CHAPTER VII
How long I hung at the window, at one time stunned and stricken down by the catastrophe that had befallen me, and at another feeling frantically for the ladder which I had over and over again made sure was not there, I know no more than another; but only that after a time, first suspicion and then rage darted lightning-like through the stupor that clouded my mind, and I awoke to all the tortures that love outraged by treachery can feel; with such pangs and terrors added as only a faithful beast, bound and doomed and writhing under the knife of its master, may be supposed to endure.
For a while, it is true, imagining that Jennie, terrified by someone’s approach, had lowered the ladder and withdrawn herself, and so would presently return to free me, I hoped against hope. But as minutes passed, and yet more minutes, laden only with the cricket’s even chirp, and the creepy rustling of the wind in the poplars, and still failed to bring her, the sound of retreating hoofs which I had heard recurred to my mind, with dreadful significance, and on the top of it a hundred suspicious circumstances; among which, as her sudden passion when I had taken fright at the foot of the ladder, was not the least, so her avoidance of me during the last few days and her frequent absences from the house, spoken to by Mrs. Harris, had their weight. In fine, by the light of her desertion after receiving the plunder, and while I sought the candlesticks — which I had now convinced myself were not there — many things obscure before, or to which I had wilfully shut my eyes — as her callousness, her greed, her recklessness — stood out plainly; while these again, being coolly considered, reflected so seriously on her, as to give her sudden departure the worst possible appearance, even in a lover’s eyes. The days had been when I would not have believed such a thing of her at the mouth of an angel from Heaven. But much had happened since, to which my passion had blinded me, temporarily only; so that it needed but a flash of searing light to make all clear, and convince me that she had not only left me, but left me trapped — I who had given up all and risked all for her!
In the first agony of pain and rage wrought by a conviction so horrible, I could think only of her treachery and my loss; and head to knees on the bare floor of the room, I wept as if my heart would break, or choked with the sobs that seemed to rend my breast. And little wonder, seeing that I had given her a boy’s first devotion, and that of all sins ingratitude has the sharpest tooth! But to this paroxysm, when I had nearly exhausted myself, came an end and an antidote in the shape of urgent fear; which suddenly flooding my soul, roused me from my apathy of grief, and set me to pacing the room in a dreadful panic, trying now the door and now the window. But on both my attacks were in vain, the former being locked and resisting the chisel, while the latter hung thirty feet above the paved yard.
Thus caught and snared, as neatly as any bird in a springe, I had no resource but in my wits; and for a time, as I had nothing of which I could form a rope, I busied myself with the expedient of throwing out the featherbed and leaping upon it. But when I had dragged it to the window, and came to measure the depth, I recoiled, as the most desperate might, from the leap; and softly returning the bed to its place, I fell to biting my nails, or fitfully roamed from place to place, according as despair or some new hope possessed me.
In one or other of these moods the dawn found me; and then in a surprisingly short time I heard the dreaded sounds of life awaken round me, and creeping to the window I closed it, and crouched down on the floor. Presently Mrs. Harris began to stir, and a boy walked whistling shrilly across the adjacent yard; and then — strangest of all things, and not to be invented — in the crisis of my fate, with the feet of those who must detect me almost on the stairs, I fell asleep; and awoke only when a key grated in the lock of the room, and I started up to find Mr. D —— in the doorway staring at me, and behind him a crowd of piled-up faces.
“Why, Price?” he cried, with a look of stupefaction, as he came slowly into the room, “what is the meaning of this?”
Then I suppose my shame and guilty silence told him, for with a sudden scowl and an oath he strode to the bureau and dragged out the drawer. A glance showed him that the money was gone, and shouting frantically to those at the door to keep it — to keep it, though they were half-a-dozen to one! — he clutched me by the breast of my coat, and shook me until my teeth chattered.
“Give it up,” he cried, spluttering with rage. “Give it up, you beggar’s brat! Or, by heaven, you shall hang for it.”
But as I had nothing to give up, and could not speak, I burst into tears; which with the odd p
art I had played in staying in the room to be taken, and perhaps my youth and innocent air, aroused the neighbours’ surprise; who, crowding round, asked him solicitously what was missing. He answered after a moment’s hesitation, sixty guineas. One had already clapped his hands over my clothes, and another had forced my mouth open; but on this they desisted, and stood, full of admiration.
“He cannot have swallowed that,” said the most active, gaping at me.
“No, that is certain. But what beats me,” said another, looking round, “is how he got here.”
“To say nothing of why he stayed here!” replied the former.
“I’ll tell you what,” quoth a third, shaking his head. “There is some hocus-pocus in this. And I should not wonder, neighbours, if the Catholics were at the bottom of it!”
The theory appeared to commend itself to more than one — for they were all of the fanatical party; but it was swept to the winds by the entrance of Mrs. D —— , who having heard of robbery, came in like a whirlwind, her face on fire, and made no more ado, but rushed upon me, and tore and slapped my cheeks with all her might, crying with each blow, “You nasty thief, will that teach you better manners? That for your roguery! and that! Oh, you jail bird, I’ll teach you!”
How long she would have continued to chastise me I cannot say, but her husband presently stepped in to protect me, and being thoroughly winded, she let me go pretty willingly. But when she learned, having hitherto been under the impression that I had been seized in the act with the money upon me, that the latter could not be found, her face turned yellow and she sat down in a chair.
“Have you searched?” she gasped.
“Everywhere,” the neighbours answered her.
“He must have thrown it through the window.”
They shook their heads.
On that she jumped up, and looked at me with a cold spite in her face that made me shiver. “Then I will tell you what it is,” she said, “he has given it to that hussy, and she has taken it! But I will have it out of him; where the money is, and she is, and how he got in! Mr. D —— , when you have done standing there like a gaby, fetch your stoutest cane; and do you, my friends, lay him across that bed! And if we do not cut it out of his skin, his name is not Richard Price. I wish I had the wench here, and I would serve her the same!”
I screamed, and fell on my knees as they laid hands on me; but Mrs. D —— was a woman without bowels, and the men were complaisant and not unwilling to see the cruel sport of the usher flogged, and the schoolmaster disciplined; and it would have gone hard with me, in spite of my prayers, if the constable had not arrived at that moment, and requested with dignity to see his prisoner. Introduced to me, he stared; and, moved I believe by an impulse of pity, said I was young to hang.
“Ay, but not too good!” Mrs. D —— answered shrilly, her head trembling with passion. “He and the hussy, that is gone, have robbed me of eighty guineas in a green bag, as I am prepared to swear!”
“Sixty, Mrs. D —— ,” said her husband, looking a warning at her and then askance at his neighbours.
“Rot take the man, does it matter to a guinea or two?” she retorted — but her sallow face flushed a little. “At any rate,” she continued, pressing her thin lips together, and nodding her head viciously, “sixty or eighty, they have taken them.”
It seemed, however, that even to that one of the neighbours had a word to say. “As to the girl, I am not so sure, Mrs. D —— ,” he struck in ponderously. “If she is the wench that has been carrying on with the gentleman at the ‘Rose,’ she has had other fish to fry. Though I don’t say, mind you, that she has not been in this. Only — —”
But Mrs. D —— could restrain herself no longer. “Only! only! Gentlemen at the ‘Rose’!” she cried. “Why, man, are you mad? What do you think has my maid — though maid she is not, but a dirty drab, and more is the pity I took her out of charity from the parish — she was Kitty Higgs’s base-born brat as you know — what has she to do with gentlemen at the ‘Rose’?”
“Well, that is not for me to say,” the man answered quietly. “Only I know that for a week or more a wench has been walking with the gentleman in the roads and so forth, by night as well as by day. I came on them twice myself hard by here; and though she was dressed more like a fine madam than a serving girl, I watched her into your house. And for the rest, Mrs. Harris must know more than I do.”
But Mrs. Harris, when Mrs. D —— turned on her in a white rage, could only cover her head and weep in a corner; as much, I believe, out of sorrow for me as on her own account. However, the fact that the good-natured woman had left Jennie pretty much to her own devices could not be gainsaid; and Mrs. D —— had much to say on it. But when she talked of sending after the baggage and jailing her, ay, and the gentleman at the “Rose” too, if he could not pay the money, the constable pursed up his lips.
“It is to be remembered that he came with His Royal Highness, our gracious Prince,” he said, swelling out his chest and puffing out his cheeks with importance. “And though it is true he ordered his horses and went for London last evening — as I know myself, having seen him go, and seen him before for the matter of that at Hertford Assizes, for he is a Counsellor — it does not follow that the wench went with him. Or, if she did, Mrs. D —— , — —”
“That she had anything to do with this money,” the neighbour who had spoken before put in.
“Precisely, Mr. Jenkins,” the constable answered. “You are a man of sense. For my part,” he continued, looking round a little defiantly, “I am no Whig, and I am not for meddling with Court gentlemen, and least of all lawyers. And if you will take my advice, Mr. D —— , you will be satisfied to lay this young jail-bird by the heels; and if he does not speak before the rope is round his neck, it is not likely that you will get your money other ways. But, lord,” the good man went on, standing back from me, to view me the better, “he is young to be such a villain! It is ‘broke and entered,’ too, and so he will swing for it.” And he took off his hat and wiped his bald head, while he gazed at me between pity and admiration.
Mrs. D —— , who was very far from sharing either of these feelings, would have had me taken at once before a Justice and committed. But the constable, partly to prove his importance, and partly, I believe, to give me a chance of disclosing where the money lay, before it was too late, would have the house and garden searched, and all the boys examined; under the impression that I might have had one of these for my accomplice. Naturally, however, nothing came of this, except the discovery that I had been out of nights lately; which had scarcely been made when who should appear on the scene, in an unlucky hour for me, but the gentleman who had identified me outside the gaming room at the “Rose.” As he had come for the very purpose of laying a complaint against me, his story destroyed the last scrap of my credit, by exhibiting me as a secret rake; and this removing all doubt of my guilt, if any were still entertained even by Mrs. Harris, it was determined to convey me, dinner over, to Sir Baldwin Winston’s, at Abbot’s Stanstead, to be committed; the two Justices who resided in Ware being at the moment disabled.
All this time, and while my fate was being decided, I listened to one and another in a dull despair, which deprived me of the power to defend myself; and from which nothing less than Mrs. D — — ‘s atrocious proposal to flog me, until I gave up the money, could draw me, and that only for a moment. Conscious of my guilt, and seized in the act and on the scene of my crime, I beheld only the near and certain prospect of punishment; while I had not the temptation to tell all, and inform against my crafty accomplice, to which a knowledge of her destination must have exposed me. Besides — and I think a great part of my apathy was due to this — I still felt the stunning effects of the blow which her cruel treachery had dealt me. I saw her in her true light; and as I sat, weeping silently, and seeming to those who watched me, little moved, I was thinking at least as much of the past and my love, and her craft, as of the fate that lay before me.
Though this was presently brought vividly before me, and of all persons by Mrs. Harris. Mrs. D —— of herself would have given me neither bit nor sup in the house; but the constable insisting that the King’s prisoner must be fed, Mrs. Harris, tearful and shaking, was allowed to bring me some broken victuals. These set before me, the good soul, instead of retiring, pottered aimlessly about the room; and by and by got behind me; on which, or rather a moment later, I felt something cold and sharp at the nape of my neck and started up. Bursting into a flood of tears she plumped down on a seat, and I saw that she had a pair of scissors and a scrap of my hair in her hand.
“Good Lord!” I said.
Doubtless the tone in which I spoke betrayed me, for the constable’s man who was in charge of me laughed brutally. “Gad, if he does not think she did it out of love!” he cried, speaking to a friend who was sitting with him. “When all the old dame wants is a charm for the rheumatics; and she thinks the chance too good to be lost.”
Then I remembered that the hair of a hanged man is in that part held to be sovereign for the rheumatics; and I sat down feeling cold and faint.
CHAPTER VIII
That saying, though a small thing, and a foolish one, brought my state home to me; and, moreover, filled me with so grisly a foreboding of the gibbet, that henceforth I gave my treacherous mistress no more thought than she deserved — which was little; but I became wholly taken up with my own fate, and especially with the recollection of a man, whom I had once seen, pitched and hanging in chains, at Much Hadham Crossroads. The horrible spectacle he had become, ten days dead, grew on my mind, until I grovelled and sweated in a green terror, and that not so much at the prospect of death — though this sent me hot and cold in the same instant — as of the harsh rope about my neck, and the sacking bands, and the dreadful apparatus, and the grinning loathsome thing I must become.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 263